l come of age,
and to subjugate him to a system of government to which, during his
minority, he could neither consent nor object.

If a person who is a minor at the time such a law is proposed, had
happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of
twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected
against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of
it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If,
therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights
after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he
been of age at the time, it is undeniably a law to take away and annul
the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the
time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot
exist.

I come now to speak of government by hereditary succession, as it
applies to succeeding generations; and to shew that in this case, as in
the case of minors, there does not exist in a nation a right to set it
up.

A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of
renewal and succession. It is never stationary.

Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and
old persons from the stage. In this ever running flood of generations
there is no part superior in authority to another. Could we conceive an
idea of superiority in any, at what point of time, or in what century of
the world, are we to fix it? To what cause are we to ascribe it? By
what evidence are we to prove it? By what criterion are we to know it? A
single reflection will teach us that our ancestors, like ourselves, were
but tenants for life in the great freehold of rights. The fee-absolute
was not in them, it is not in us, it belongs to the whole family of
man, thro* all ages. If we think otherwise than this, we think either as
slaves or as tyrants. As slaves, if we think that any former generation
had a right to bind us; as tyrants, if we think that we have authority
to bind the generations that are to follow.

It may not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what
is to be understood by a generation, in the sense the word is here used.

As a natural term its meaning is sufficiently clear. The father, the
son, the grandson, are so many distinct generations. But when we speak
of a generation as describing the persons in whom legal authority
resides, as distinct from anot